10 elements of entrepreneurship

01 Only 39% of entrepreneurial businesses have a ‘very good idea’ of their competitors’ business.
-- Deloitte Entrepreneurship UK 2009 Report


02 A latent pool of hidden innovators (over 50s, ethnic minorities, the disabled) could potentially add £15 billion to the UK economy by 2012 if the right conditions were created.
-- Cass Business School Centre for New Technologies, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.


03 There are around 4.8 million private sector enterprises in the UK, employing 22.8 million people with an estimated combined annual turnover of £3,200 billion.
-- http://stats.bis.gov.uk/ed/sme/Stats_Press_release_2009.pdf


04Small and medium-sized enterprises together account for 99.9% of all UK enterprises, 59.8% of private sector employment and 49% of private sector turnover.
-- http://stats.bis.gov.uk/ed/sme/Stats_Press_release_2009.pdf



05Of the 4.7 million UK enterprises, only 15% are led by women
-- “Inspiring Women: Corporate best practice in Europe”, London Business School.

06SMEs regard four factors as equally important barriers to innovation: problems in access to finance, scarcity of skilled labour, a lack of market demand and the high cost of human resources
-- http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/facts-figures-analysis/sme-observatory/index_en.htm


07Researchers at MIT found that companies held by living MIT alumni employed more than 3 million people and did $2 trillion in business worldwide, equivalent to the 11th-largest economy in the world.
-- www.entrepreneur.com/article/217327


08Women account for around one in four of all enterprises in the Slovak Republic.
-- http://www.euractiv.com/en/enterprise-jobs/female-entrepreneurs-vastly-outnumbered-europe/article-186911

09Research indicates that female entrepreneurs are more innovative than their male counterparts: they are more likely to be providing a product new to the market, more likely to be using technology in their products or services and more likely to be offering a product or service developed in the last year.
-- http://www.theukrc.org/resources/key-facts-and-figures/set-women-s-enterprise-in-the-uk


10Samoa went from one of the toughest places in the world to start a business to one of the best -- 131st out of 183 to number 20.
-- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703859204575525883366862428.html?mod=WSJ_SmallBusiness_LEFTTopStories